App Fever
by Chrys-DASL
Summary: Rattles is bored in his computer programming class until a young new teacher arrives. He teaches them how to create apps. Is this the start of something big? For my 10x10 Challenge/NaNo2018


Rattles (8): invention (5)

_App Fever_

Rattles honestly thought his coding class was the most boring class on the entire planet, possibly the entire universe if there were aliens out there with computer technology and school. For two hours, he was stuck in a room fully of stinky, sweaty nerds behind computers while they worked on various coding projects. It was an easy A for him—he'd been doing computer coding on his own for a while now, and he helped Molly run a blog website about her skateboarding. He was the go-to guy among his family and friends for computer help, so this was nothing to him.

The teacher was an old dumpy dude who sat up front working on his own project, not that he ever said what it was. He had a screen protector up so you couldn't see the screen unless you were looking straight at it from the front, and he never said a word. In fact, one day there was a fight in the back of the class and the guy never said a word.

Rattles had no opinion of him, none at all. This guy just sat up front and did whatever all day, and that was okay with him. That meant he could spend more time on his phone doing whatever he wanted, which was quite nice. He didn't have that luxury in other classes.

Until today. Rattles arrived to the class to find a substitute in the front of the room. She was old and old fashioned. Despite this being a computer class, she had the chairs arranged in a set of rows and columns far from the computers and worktables. They were to sit in silence and read, except there was no textbook for this class. It was the advanced level, so they left their textbooks behind. This didn't sit well with the teacher, who decided they would all just sit there then and do or say nothing.

Rattles shot his hand up in the air. She reluctantly called on him. Rattles pointed to the hall passes by the door with their dust-covered edges from lack of use, "May I use the restroom please?" he asked as nicely as he could.

Somehow this worked. Rattles grabbed a pass and walked up to the office. His favorite counselor was in his office alone, so Rattles strolled inside.

"Well, how are you today Mr. Ciccone?"

"Who's the broad down in computers?" Rattles asked flatly as he took a seat.

"I don't follow," the counselor admitted.

"The teacher is out in my computer class. The sub is ridiculous. She wants us to read our textbooks and not touch the computers. I'm not going back in there while she's in charge," Rattles said firmly.

The counselor nodded, "I can understand that. I can write you a pass for the library for the next few days until we get in the new guy—"

"The new guy? What happened to the old guy?" Rattles asked.

The counselor ran his fingers through his hair while shooting Rattles nervous looks, "Okay, I could lose my job if I told you what I know, but I know you, Rattles. I'll also know if you told anyone because no one knows this—it's between me, the principal, the superintendent, and the police—"

"The police?"

"The police," the counselor nodded, leaning forward and whispering, "He was running an elaborate ponzi scheme on the internet complete with a child pornography ring—"

"No shit!" Rattles whispered, shaking his head, "I always thought he was up to something."

"Watch you mouth, but yes, it was a shock to everyone involved. Police showed up here the other night and raided his workstation. They'd already been to his house, and he's already in jail somewhere, hopefully in solitary confinement if they're nice. It's a huge deal, but we've already got interviews happening for his position," the counselor explained.

Rattles sighed, "Well, I hope we actually do something now."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, I know everyone praised the old guy because people got work done and yada yada yada, but I never learned a thing from him. I already knew it all, so it's been a chore this semester pretending to keep up with everyone. Honestly I'm on my phone most of the time. It's nice, but I want to advance myself. What if that's a career I want to get into? Who's going to teach me the ropes if they don't teach me at all?" Rattles said. He was buttering it up a little, but he really was interested in computer coding. He just knew all he needed about websites and whatnot, and there were only two options in his coding class before: websites and robots, and he definitely wasn't into robots.

The counselor nodded, "Well, I've met the candidates or looked over their files already. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It'll be early next week before they're hired. Why don't you use your library time wisely?"

Rattles accepted the pass and went back to the classroom to grab his things. The substitute watched him with beady eyes but said nothing as he held up his pass, grabbed his things, and high-tailed it out of the room. The others watched him with envy, but there was nothing they could do. They were stuck in limbo until the new teacher was hired and arrived to save them.

[LINE BREAK]

Mr. Taylor was a young guy, younger than a lot of Rattles' other teachers. He wore trendier clothes and had a better haircut too, but that's not what set him apart from the old guy. Mr. Taylor was a true teacher. He saw they didn't have textbooks and made them all download a PDF textbook onto their devices to use. Rattles found it interesting right away—they wouldn't just be coding robots and websites, but they would learn how to make apps too.

"For your first project, I want to teach you guys something I know you haven't covered before. In teams or by yourself, I don't care which, I want you to develop an app that A: Is currently not on the market, or B: Is an improvement to an app that is already on the market. You have three weeks to finish it, but you only have until tomorrow to pick your poison. I'm expecting a full write-up tomorrow. Let me get your emails and I'll send you a sample of what I'm looking for," Mr. Taylor said, walking over to the brand new workstation to begin his side of the work.

Rattles and the others broke off to other parts of the room. The usual guys paired up together. One of the teams had five guys in it, but Rattles wanted to work alone. He pulled out his phone and started looking through the app store on his phone. His eyes quickly fell onto an app he quickly deleted. It wouldn't work on his phone at all, and it didn't seem to work on anyone else's either.

After looking through the write-up sample, Rattles knew he could easily get started with the project. Now he just needed to figure out the rest, which was where Mr. Taylor came in. The next day, he accepted the write-ups and had the class read the textbook in regards to apps while he walked around the room. A few guys were told they had to redo their write-ups, that the apps they chose to create already existed. One guy was told the app he chose to fix wasn't actually broken—the guy wanted to reconfigure it entirely for his liking, but that wasn't the assignment.

Rattles had a good idea. He showed off the broken app, and Mr. Taylor also installed the app and had it fail. He approved the topic and told Rattles that he could start with everyone else the following day.

Except it wasn't easy. For the first time all semester, Rattles was out of his element. He decided that, unlike the other guys who jumped right in, he would take his time to really figure out how to code an app. The textbook had a practice program, so Rattles went through the exercise. He didn't finish it the first day, so he continued it the second day.

As he worked, the questions began. His classmates weren't as gifted. They were macho boys who thought they knew everything, so they jumped right into the design phase without doing any research. They had no clue what they were doing, and it clearly showed. Mr. Taylor stopped class and had everyone meet up in the open part of the room the substitute used for chairs. Instead of neat rows, everyone was in a pile by their groups. Rattles was off to the side wishing things would hurry up so he could get back to his lesson.

Mr. Taylor turned on the projector and put his workstation's screen up on the board. He then pointed to Rattles, who was nearest to the light switch and thought that's what he wanted. He turned off the lights, but Mr. Taylor shook his head, "Thanks for that, but I want you up here. Rattles is going to show you what he's been doing these last few days."

Rattles was nervous but followed his lead. He narrated his actions, "The textbook he sent us has a free program to do lessons. You create an account with your student email address and a password of your choice," he said, putting in his credentials and pressing the START button on the screen. The website opened, revealing several lessons, "The app-based lessons are in chapters six and seven. I'm still on chapter six. I wanted to learn the basics, and they have ten practice activities with the vocabulary and whatever, but I've been doing the projects. There's two of those. I did the first one yesterday, but I couldn't finish the second one."

"Would you say it's hard?" Mr. Taylor asked.

Rattles shrugged, "Not really. I mean, I went back and read the chapters a few times to get the vocabulary down, but it's not hard. I mean, we already know how to code stuff, right? This is just extending our knowledge further."

"Exactly," Mr. Taylor smiled, turning to the class, "I know I'm not you old teacher, that I do things a little differently. The reason you're all struggling to get your projects off the ground is because you don't know what you're doing. That's not a bad thing, not at all. You're working with something new, so you'll have to learn how it works. If you use the resources I give you at your own pace, you'll figure it out. Now, get back to work. Let me know if you have any questions."

Rattles went back to his own workstation and got back to his lessons. Around him, the different groups found their way to individual computers to get to work. For the rest of the week, they did the lessons together. The room was quiet except when questions were asked, questions Mr. Taylor often explained to the class just in case some of the others weren't as brave and also had questions.

In the end, Rattles was ready, but so was the rest of the class. While Rattles fixed the app he chose to work better, the other guys created various apps. Most of them were gaming apps, at least until they realized they needed art to create a game, and then some guys changed to something simpler. One group created a story app, except you got to pick where it went. That meant creating various options with a lot of outcomes, which meant a lot of writing. Mr. Taylor had to show them how to divide up the work to make it fair, then they were on track again.

When the unit was over, the class was asked to put their apps out there. Once they were approved, the class downloaded each other's apps and gave them a run. Guys like Rattles had to go a different route, not that there were many of them. The two people who went that route had to contact the developers and start a conversation with them. The other guy was ignored, but Rattles had an immediate response. Apparently the developers lost some key people and didn't have the staff to do what Rattles did. They immediately implemented his changes, and suddenly the app worked on his operating system. They had problems with the others, so he agreed to help them. They decided to pay him for his efforts, which was a shocking surprise for Rattles.

But Mr. Taylor wasn't surprised at all. When Rattles told him the news, he made it a point to tell the class about his achievement. Rather than look down on him, the guys asked if they could do the unit over. Mr. Taylor didn't mind, and suddenly everyone was finding apps to improve. It was a fifty-fifty shot when they were done as to whether the companies would listen, but at least they were branching out. They were learning new things from a very competent teacher, and all was well.

~End

A/N: Piece 32 of 100 for my 10x10 Challenge. I don't know how well I adhered to the theme of invention here, but I like this piece. I really like redeeming these Tough Customers, especially Rattles. He's so smart and talented, btu I think he needs more chances to let that show. I'm looking forward to completing the other themes with him.

If you would like to participate in this challenge, let me know. The themes are on my profile and you can PM me with any questions. Keep in mind that you don't have to do it in a month if you don't want to. I'm just crazy;)


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